In a strange coincidence, I'd just downloaded a paper on this very topic James Murray's How the leopard got its spots from Scientific American in 1988 -- PDFposted by jamespake at 3:39 AM on August 7, 2006

If time travel were possible, the first thing I would do would be to go back and save Alan Turing. That poor brilliant man.posted by Hildegarde at 4:18 AM on August 7, 2006

I remember using these systems in my master thesis (Dutch PDF but it has some moderately nice pictures), which was about using cellular automata to synthesize textures directly on meshes, inspired by Greg Turk's work. Fun stuff.posted by Runkst at 5:05 AM on August 7, 2006

We often use Turing even in (especially in?) the humanities side of computing and sometimes note his sexual orientation.

How is it that society can still officially repress gays? The ubiquity of the computer not to mention the entire Enigma project stand as testament to Turing's brilliance and I pledge to make more prominent note of Turing's biography if for no other reason than to increase acceptance and in some small way atone for the atrocious treatment society affords the "other."posted by beelzbubba at 5:08 AM on August 7, 2006

If time travel were possible, the first thing I would do would be to go back and save Alan Turing.

Bring him forward to a fun time, maybe the last half of 1970s, but leave him with a lot of current (2006, or later if you have a time machine) computer science papers. Then let him work during the day on new problems. He gets rich and famous, has a great time at night singing and dancing to "I Will Survive" with his boyfriends, and computer science lurches forward 30+ years.

(Also, you can tell him who shot JR and everyone will think he's a genius.)posted by pracowity at 6:01 AM on August 7, 2006

Matmos recently did a Turing-inspired music/installation piece. Some video of it hereposted by HellKatonWheelz at 6:31 AM on August 7, 2006

When I read Hodges' The Enigma, which I still consider the best scientific biography I have yet encountered, I thought Hodges had left it an open question whether Turing had committed suicide or had been assassinated by some branch of Britain's intelligence apparatus or the CIA. I would even have said Hodges came down on the assassination side, although he did not explicitly say so.

But I found no support for this conclusion in the reviews I was able to read, notably Douglas Hofstadter's, and I still wonder if my perception is purely idiosyncratic or widely shared.

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